It is customary to blame secularism for the eclipse of religion in modern society. But it would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive and insipid. When...
Religion is at its best when it makes us ask hard questions of ourselves. It is at its worst when it deludes us into thinking we have all the answers for everybody else.
C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics…allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.
We worshiped Jesus instead of following him on his same path. We made Jesus into a mere religion instead of a journey toward union with God and everything else. This shift made us into a religion of “belonging and believing” instead of a religion of...
Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion—which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the will of God and are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who...
If worship isn’t leading to the fire, if adoration isn’t leading to love, if the liturgy isn’t leading to a clearer perception of reality, if God isn’t leading to life, of what use is religion except to create more division, more fanaticism, more antagonism?
There are many religions, many beliefs, but only one faith. We can (and must) learn to take our faith more seriously than the beliefs in which that faith has found expression up till now. The present calls for a different expression, if faith is to have a future....
I am maybe the ultimate Protestant, the man at the end of the Protestant road, for, as I have read in the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion, but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems...
Mature religion involves changing ourselves and letting ourselves be changed by a mysterious encounter with grace, mercy, and forgiveness. This is the truth that will set us free (John 8:32). Yet much of our history has involved trying to change other people--with our...